(Almost) every Saturday we review all Kickstarter campaigns in the "Games" category in the next two weeks. Any we think are notable for some reason are curated here. This is written from the perspective of people looking to buy games and game accessories that offer interesting mechanics or ideas. We prefer heavy strategy games, miniature-heavy games, and games with real-time mechanics as opposed to party games, children's games, or light strategy games.

We Backed

Sometimes you have to put your money where your mouth is. These are the campaigns we backed in this batch.

Conan was a favorite game of 2016, so a Batman update to the Conan is a must-purchase for our studio. It's pricey, it's Kickstarter exclusive, it's the FOMO of the week!

They're up to 3.2M, and the stretch goals haven't stopped with a new character and miniature unlocking at every 100-200K. To put into perspective one stretch goal distance is the total funding of an entire very-successful board game campaign.

This game is gauranteed fun, even if we'll never get around to painting all those miniatures!

A mashed up strategy game with a pretty neat series of game rounds (including a SGL favorite a real time round.) This game looks to have some really impressive design as each stage of the game plays into the next, allowing you to acquire city tiles with points, build your city, then fend off monsters to score enough points for the next round.

The prestige version of the game also comes with these really neat coins.

We're suckers for a real-time game element and the rest of the game looks really fun.

Board Game Campaigns

AuZtralia is a very weird concept as a type of euro-style Area Control game, with some pretty heavily themed Old Ones roaming around Australia. There is a port available on Tabletopia, which we will be reviewing later on.

From a creator stand point, this campaign uses the "Advent Calendar" style stretch goals which reveal as the campaign goes on, which is a style of stretch goal I first saw mentioned at the Stonemaier games blog. This is supposed to give backers a reason to check in on the campaign each day, and prevents early project burn out if you reach your funding goals too quickly. Despite this, I think Auztralia's funding goal is a bit low for a campaign this professional. Currently sitting at $132,000 with 6 days to go.

Most notable gameplay tweak: the game doesn't have turns. Instead, there is a time track that the players move down. Whoever is at the back of the track acts. When you pass the Old One token, it begins making moves on the board.

Despite the low-budge design, barely existent artwork, and absurdly low goal ($40!), we were tempted to take a chance on this one. And we probably would have if it wasn't for the massive Gotham City pledge this week.

In this game, you get a set of polyhedral dice, and you must place them as "workers" similar to the idea of a game like Alien Frontiers or Kingsburg. The dice give you power to perform certain actions and can be upgraded via cards and purchases. This designer (Joe Magic) doesn't have a great track record on his prior games, but this seems to be his passion and labor of love.

Just listen to his excitement in this video:

RPG-Related Campaigns

This is a pretty creative RPG system that crams rich roleplaying concepts into a two hour session. We had never heard of this system before the Kickstarter campaign. It presents a unique setting and modified game system all built around the same core rules.

The settings are ultra creative and include:

A setting where you play toys

A setting about aging/old heroes

A setting where the players are members of an evil queen's court.

One thing that was unfortunate was they do not have a free sample to be found on the entire page. A free sample is a must for a semi-obscure RPG system like this.